


Dime A Dozen

by MixterGlacia



Series: Spare Change [3]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 23:10:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11262960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MixterGlacia/pseuds/MixterGlacia
Summary: Project Freelancer doesn't really have a proper therapist. So Wash has to deal with everyone's nightmares. Especially his own.





	Dime A Dozen

They all dealt with nightmares. Project Freelancer didn’t have enough funding to fix them up when their bodies broke, let alone their minds. So each of them had their own customized little slice of hell to explore when they couldn’t stay awake anymore, and found their ways back to the barracks.

 

York couldn’t be left alone for long before he started pacing, by the end he was chewing at the ends of his fingers until they were raw. He’d been abandoned as a kid so it hadn’t come as much of a surprise when his nights were filled with  _ seemingly  _ wonderful places, the only catch being they were devoid of all life. Any companionship you could think of was absent. No people, no dogs, hell he’d take robots or even zombies if it meant he could speak to something that animated. Nightmares as they were, that would never happen.

 

North had frighteningly realistic visions of his sister dying in various ways. He haunted the halls, having to reassure Theta that, no they weren’t real, it’ll be okay. Since he had to talk his AI through it, he was able to recount his nightmares with the most accuracy. It didn’t help that most of them were more extreme results of past injuries.

 

The Freelancer in question was petrified of having her independence, her free will stolen. Before Eta and Iota came into the mix she often ran into Wash (literally) in the otherwise empty mess hall. The two of them woke up from their own around the same time, North and York having settled back in roughly an hour or two before. So South started venting to him. In her dream she’d been given that AI she wanted above all else, but it stole her body when she looked away, chaining her up in a box. She said it reminded her of Sigma, in the voice at least.

 

Wyoming required sound, of any sort to sleep. It was the real reason he and Florida had started rooming together, despite the rumor (Lies spread by West and Indiana.) that they both met before Freelancer, in some wild kinky orgy. (They hadn’t even been hired in the same month and came from different colonies.) The way he’d described it, it was like some strange puzzle room, full of brick walls with no sound. No echoes, no footsteps, not even breathing. Just oppressive silence. Without the stereo blasting, he didn’t sleep. When Wyoming didn’t sleep, he took over the kitchen and started cooking with no reason other than an excuse to rattle the bakeware.

 

Florida, as it turned out (to everyone's surprise) was only a little creepy by default. He explained to Wash when he showed up during one of Reggie’s cooking sprees, that he ramped it up in public to keep people distant. His voice was softer than usual as he elaborated that it wasn’t a good idea to get close to him. He said he was to blame for this trend of his relationship partners (romantic or platonic didn’t matter) getting hurt. With a seriousness he didn’t believe the man capable of, he made it clear he didn’t just mean bruised ego’s. Nothing good happened to the people he cared about.

 

Wash, ever the unofficial therapist at this point, countered by asking about Wyoming. Florida just tilted his head, long hair not quite hiding the sad way he smiled. As it turned out the man didn’t really care if he got hurt, because he’d be damned before he lost his “Little song bird.”

 

...Okay they could still be a little odd if they wanted to be.

 

CT was afraid  _ for _ people. She kept reminding them hers weren’t just nightmares. No they were very real. Some day, she had snapped at Wash, they’d all be torn to shreds by this damned project, and they’d never be whole again.

 

To top off, all of their own nightmares, most of the ones with AI had to deal with double the demons. Theta feared just about anything remotely unsettling, Delta has issues when he can’t just logic a problem away and works himself into feedback loops trying to get a solution, Gamma would rage after having dreams of the slightest thought of being stolen from Wyoming, The twins easily whipped into absolute  _ fits _ at the suggestion of being separated, and Sigma...well the crackling AI had only spoken once to Wash about them. All he said was he was plagued by the thought of not becoming real.

 

Everyone in the group other than Carolina and Tex had come to Wash at some point, eyes dark and heavy, voices unsteady. Even those with no voice at all.

 

The whole coin joke had gotten a little (a lotta) bit old at this point, but even what lurked in their dreams went hand in hand.

 

Maine had been tormented with drowning ever since he was little. His mother, he said, had snapped when he was seven. She had nearly succeeded in holding him under the bath water, but his fingers had snagged into the shower curtain, sending the metal support rod crashing to the tile and alerting his aunt who came to his rescue. If it was any deeper than a tub, he wanted nothing to do with it if it was up to him. Not that anyone ever asked before sending him on dive team missions.

 

It didn’t bother Wash to sit on the sidelines when the Director gave in to the demands for one shore week a year and dumped them in whatever beach town was closest to hand. He’d already guessed that Maine didn’t like water before they’d been given their AI, but when the full story was laid out before him, his stomach twisted into a sour lump.

 

So he shared the source of his own night terrors for the first time.

 

They were a total 180 Maine’s trauma, even in the root cause was similar. The older man’s voice broke before he could launch into it, thick with repressed emotion. Iota relayed the basic path the dreams seemed to take.

 

They always began with a smothering atmosphere. It could be a building, or a totally open space, but the air was always the same. Like a tiny broom closet in the height of summer. Then came the heat. The all consuming heat. He could feel the heat on his own arms, and when he looked down, Maine swore he saw his skin beginning to distort with blisters. Then he realized they were too dark to be his own. 

 

He looks to Wash. Silence hangs between them for longer than normal. It gives him time to examine the patchy scars on his partner.

 

“...I told you my mom smoked.” was all he saw fit to say. It was all the explanation Maine needed. The penny had finally dropped. One side was water, the other side was fire.

 

* * *

 

 

The heat bloomed across his face, curling lazily along, as though it was pretending not to be either capable or intending to sear his flesh. Still, heat meant fire, and David could smell the acrid fumes from the rug that had caught first. When he looks to his hands, he doesn’t see the burns, but his power armor instead. Instinctively he flexes them, and the walls shimmer. Now, it’s his room on the Mother Of Invention. Maine walks in, chuffing a greeting.

 

The heat has not eased, nor has the smell. He is not awake.

 

Dream-Maine still had bandages stretching around his throat. They look filthy, like they’d never been changed. Instead of stitches and blood, the skin looks like charcoal. It’s cracked in places and infected pus oozes from everywhere. These observations are forgotten when an orange light flares into the place Eta is meant to be.

 

**_“Hello Agent Washington.”_ ** is all Sigma says before the room is consumed in flame.

 

* * *

 

 

Iota wakes him as she always does. By waking Eta, who then wakes Maine, who then wakes Wash. It’s a perfectly functional, and not at all round about system.

 

Maine can feel it before he’s even totally awake himself this time, the fire clawing at his arms. This was a particularly bad one then. Normally he just has the smell of smoke faintly hanging in the air. Reaching out, he gently tugs on a handful of Wash’s dreadlocks. The man jolts back, and Maine is lucky his nose just hurts like hell and isn’t broken.

 

“M-Maine?” there’s always this raw edge to Wash’s voice when he’s woken up from a fire dream. His hands reach back as he rolls over, thumbs brushing over where Maine had been shot. “Eta?”

 

The blue AI flickers into sight, curled up next to where Wash’s hand rests. **“Yes?”** he responds quietly, the small bunk bathed in blue light. Iota also fades in, making it an almost cheery spring green. There was a silent understanding that when either of the two woke like this, they both showed up, to chase away the colours of their nightmares. Green was safety for the pair. Green was grass on solid ground, untouched by fire or water.

 

“It...it wasn’t mom this time, Maine.” Wash’s fingers are trembling against Maine’s scars. “It was Sigma. He was your AI, not Eta. Instead of y-” his voice breaks. “-...you weren’t shot. You were burnt. It was awful and i-infected...he started the fire.”

 

**“The fire’s gone, Wash. You’re awake, and we’re here.”** Iota soothes him, petting his knuckles lightly.

 

**“A-And we’re here.”** Eta parrots, like he usually does when he’s unsure of what else to say. He tries to smile even if he knows it won’t be seen through the helmet. The pair can feel it through their bond and that’s what matters.

 

_ “Like he’d ever leave Carolina.”  _ Maine rattles.

 

* * *

 

 

His mind felt like it was full of cotton. Just the voices. Wait...no.

 

The lack of voices. Voices that used to be there. 

 

Still, he could make out Eta, Iota, and S-...well everyone he guessed. They begged,  _ He  _ begged Maine to just take Epsilon, take Beta, to escape and  _ remember _ them all.

 

_ “Or-”  _ the one that was the faintest, and yet the clearest of them all,  _ “Do us a favor and just forget.”  _

 

Snow is swirling around him, he can feel everything as though it is real. Can see Wash, hear him pleading with the Meta.

 

He can’t stop. Fire is licking at the back of his mind, to just take the unit, to just  **_remember-_ ** _ -or forget!  _ **_Shut Up!_ **

 

He shakes his head to try and clear the voices away. There are so many ghostly words. Candy coloured sim troopers are darting in and out of sight. Then he sees the cliff. He hears the icy water crashing below.

 

Pain laces in his chest, he hears the metal before he sees the hook being jammed into his wound. It burns with the hollow demands of Sigma, because of all the voices, his is the only one wanting to push through the pain, to be real, to be remembered.

 

At least in the nightmare, anyway.

 

Because that’s all it could be. As he’s dragged over the edge, he can see Wash. Hears him cry out his name for the first time in what feels like the history of the nightmares. Not Maine, not Meta, but his real name.

 

That’s what shatters the feeling of water in his lungs, of the weight of his armor pulling him under, because Wash would never do that. The dream falls apart around him because Wash would never call out his name. The name he hates.

 

* * *

 

 

Maine wakes to Wash’s elbow prodding his ribs. Judging by how hard the smaller man is coughing and gasping, he must’ve felt the water too. Wash checks again to be sure they are both awake, AI’s illuminating the darkness, before weakly croaking, “Holy shit, we gotta spend less time around Carolina if that  _ fucking _ AI of hers won’t stop invading our dreams.” he thinks for a moment before adding.

 

“It’s almost like he’s setting up this whole other universe in our nightmares.”

**Author's Note:**

> That got more graphic than I expected. Also points to whoever can find the reference.


End file.
